13 Years In Jail For Protesting Big Banks

According to San Diego’s KGTV, Jeff Olson, a 40-year-old man from North Park, is facing up to 13 years behind bars and fines of up to 13 thousand dollars after being charged with 13 counts of vandalism for writing anti-bank slogans on sidewalks outside three Bank of America branches using water-soluble chalk.

There is no question of Olson’s guilt as a surveillance camera caught him in the act, and he readily admits it during an interview with KGTV:

“I wrote ‘No thanks big banks,’ I wrote ‘Shame on Bank of America.'”

“Always on city sidewalks, washable chalk, never crude messages, never vulgar, clearly topical.”

Olson maintains that “free speech is protected” and said that “was encouraging folks to close their accounts at big Wall Street banks to transfer their money local nonprofit, community credit unions.” However the official hearing his case, Judge Shore, disagreed ruling “In light of the fact that it’s clear in the case law, vandalism is not a legitimate exercise of free speech rights. It really is irrelevant what the message is, or content is.”

In an interesting twist, KGTV is also reporting that Mayor Bob Filner has taken a public stand against prosecuting Olson and “sent a memo to Council President Todd Gloria asking him to place the issue on the docket for the council’s next closed session meeting.”

The San Diego Reader reports that the memo reads:

“This young man is being persecuted for thirteen counts of vandalism stemming from an expression of political protest that involved washable children’s chalk on a City sidewalk. It is alleged that he has no previous criminal record. If these assertions are correct, I believe this is a misuse and waste of taxpayer money. It could also be characterized as an abuse of power that infringes on First Amendment particularly when it is arbitrarily applied to some, but not all, similar speech.”

Huffington Post is reporting the following email was received from the San Diego prosecutors office regarding People v. Olson:

1. This is a graffiti case where the defendant is alleged to have engaged in the conduct on 13 different occasions. The trial judge has already held that, under California law, it is still graffiti even if the material can be removed with water. Most graffiti can be removed. Also, the judge and a different pre-trial judge held that the First Amendment is not a defense to vandalism/graffiti. 2. The defense is trying to make this case into a political statement, which it is not. This is just one of some 20,000 criminal cases that are referred to us annually by the police department. We have prosecutors who decide whether to issue cases. They are professionals. The City Attorney was not involved in deciding whether to issue this case as is typical practice in prosecution offices for most cases. He hadn’t heard of this case until it was in the media. 3. The defense is whipping up hysteria about the prospect of 13 years in custody. This is not a 13 year custody case. It is a standard graffiti case compounded by the fact that the defendant is alleged to have done it on 13 separate occasions. Because there were 13 different occasions when the defendant allegedly engaged in the conduct, the law requires them to be set out separately in the complaint. This increases the maximum sentence, but it still is a graffiti case and nothing more. The courts routinely hear graffiti cases and handle them appropriately using judicial discretion. 4. It is not unusual for victims to contact police or prosecutors about a case. Our prosecutors are trained to focus only on their ethical standards in deciding whether to file a case. 5. We prosecute vandalism and theft cases regardless of who the perpetrator or victim might be. We don’t decide, for example, based upon whether we like or dislike banks. That would be wrong under the law and such a practice by law enforcement would change our society in very damaging ways.

You can watch a news segment from KGTV below:

San Diego, California News Station – KFMB Channel 8 – cbs8.com

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